61 Frames Per Second : atlus

Question of the Day: Valkyrie Profile and the Need for Voiced Dialogue

John Constantine — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 23:00:00 GMT

My backlog is becoming untenable. There are games, games that I started months ago, sitting in a pile that appears to be growing of its own volition. Where the hell did that copy of Pro Evolution Soccer even come from and why is it sitting in the “to play” pile? No one in my home even likes soccer!

The worst of the lot is Persona 4. Rather than hide myself away like some horrid realization of gamer stereotype, refusing to venture into the sun until the game is complete, I’ve been working through Persona since early December, taking it a bit at a time. It’s starting to drive me crazy. A few days ago, I fired it up for the first time since mid-February and was treated to one of its scarce animated cutscenes. Turns out that bear suit made a dude! Yeah, not a dude wearing a bear suit. The bear suit formed a dude inside of it. More startling than spontaneous dude generation was hearing the characters’ voices. I had forgotten they could talk you see. This is because, with very rare exceptions, I always turn off the voice acting in RPGs. Why? Because the voice acting is almost always terrible. Dragon Quest VIII’s British cast and Final Fantasy XII’s gang of breathy stoics are exceptions to the rule. Most of the time, you have to deal with screeching whiners who insist on naming every single thing they do and I’ll have none of it. Honestly though, I wonder why voice is considered a necessity in modern design.

A few weeks back, some folks were pretty upset when Square-Enix said they would not be adding an English voice track to Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume in addition to losing the game’s already completed Japanese voiceovers. A few years back, the entire internet flipped its wig when Eiji Aonuma said The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess would not have spoken dialogue.

My question to you, dear reader, is what’s the big deal? Is voice acting necessary in every game these days? Does it actually make an RPG, or any game really, better or worse when you can hear its characters speaking? Should a game be criticized if it doesn’t have voice? What if it only has limited voice?

Let me know.

Related links:

Question of the Day: Ogre Battle and How Much Tutorial is Too Much?
Question of the Day: Your Ideal Controller?
Question of the Day: Yu-Gi-Oh! And Card-Based Videogames?
Question of the Day: Why Can’t I Emulate?

Rite of Spring: Flower and What’s Lacking in the Romantic Games Movement

John Constantine — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 02:00:00 GMT

Last week was full of everything you want out of a vacation: a change of setting from urban sprawl to glorious mountain range, rancid air exchanged for clean winter wind, great food, better scotch, and the best company. Of course, there was also a smorgasbord of great portable games. Retro Game Challenge, Atlus’ under-the-radar curiosity My World, My Way, and Kirby Super Star Ultra made for marvelous palette cleansers, washing away the last traces of Epic Holiday Gaming morsels still stuck between my gaming teeth. It was restful, brief, and rejuvenating. When I returned, I knew that it was going to be time for 2009 hardcore gaming to go into high gear what with Street Fighter IV and a Killzone 2 demo waiting, but the first thing I had to spend some time with was Flower. As soon as it had finished installing, well, it felt like my vacation had just gotten an extension.

The game is exhilarating. Having grown up in rural upstate New York, the contrast of Flower’s city-bound preludes and its soaring bucolic playgrounds pulls at very specific heartstrings in me. The game is brief but I’m no less taken with it. Jenova Chen and ThatGameCompany are damn good at eliciting just this sort of emotional response with their games. Their debut Cloud was rich with the same bittersweet catharsis that characterizes Flower. Both are something like the game equivalent of a symphonic poem, their fluid flight-based gameplay replacing music as the visceral informant of a visual/audio narrative. They’re games unified in subject too; Cloud and Flower chronicle escapes to a pure, natural world from metropolitan confinement. They are concerned with beauty and simplicity.

I wouldn’t say that Chen and TGC started it, but they’re certainly poster children for what appears to be a burgeoning romantic movement in game design. As much as Jon Blow’s Braid was a commentary on play conventions, it was also a deliberately lyrical game. Trading in pastoral visuals and acoustics to inform its tale of romantic loss and redemption, it shares more than a little with Flower and Cloud. I’m wondering, though, why these new romantics have yet to explore more emotionally troubling and challenging themes. Gamers and critics are constantly citing “dark” themes as a mark of credibility in mainstream game design, but the darkness they refer to is usually tied up in angst driven narrative and violence. Where are the games that are legitimately dark, games that don’t just gain their emotional thrust from beauty or human ugliness? Braid’s ambiguous conclusion and TGC’s exploration of predatory natural selection, Flow, flirt with ugliness and dissonance but never make them their focus. (Flow’s poetic prescript “…life could be simple…” limits the game’s reach from the start.) But why can’t the lyrical style and play of these games be applied to subject matter like Procedural Arts’ Façade, a game that places you directly into a married couple’s complete relationship breakdown?

I’m excited by these creator’s efforts and, yes, moved by them. I was caught up in Flower from the start. But I am anxious and thirsty for the romantic games’ movement to find its Stravinsky, that artist who asks me to look at and hear and play something I’d rather not to make their work that much more powerful.

Related links:

Flower - A Zen de Blob?
Indie Dev Moment: Dyson
Far Out, Man
Ceci N'Est Pas Une 1-Up: The Surrealist Future of Postpunk Gaming

Why Do You Keep Doing This to Me, Atlus: Persona Comes to PSP

John Constantine — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 23:00:00 GMT

I’m currently in month two of my prolonged incarceration. Atlus says that I should buck up. Persona 4 is, apparently, some fifteen hours shorter than its predecessor. Atlus says I’ll be able to go outside again soon. Possibly by this spring! I have hope that Atlus will release from my bonds, loose me from this level grinding, this wandering through randomly generated dungeon after randomly made dungeon. Atlus says I’ll be able to talk to real live people again, and not the pleasant digital avatars it demands I form emotional bonds with. I look forward to that day.

…

Now Atlus tells me it’s remaking the original Persona for PSP. Atlus says that with the game’s new graphics, it can watch me anywhere. At any time. And always keep me close.

SOMEBODY HELP ME! This trailer already has me in its terrible clutches!

Related links:

Whatcha Not Playing: Persona 4
And Now Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Love: Atlus Reprints Persona 2
Persona 2: Innocent Sin Translation Complete
Yeah, But Is It Art?: Persona 3 FES
Whatcha Playing: Persona, Fallout, and the Trans-Pacific RPG Ideal

Atlus Shows You Love, Localizes Damn Near Everything

John Constantine — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 01:00:00 GMT

Actually, half of that headline might be a blatant lie. Depending on your point of view, it’s a distinct possibility that Atlus hates you and everyone with a sweet tooth for melodrama, a lust for turn-based battles, and a fetish for watching numbers get higher. They hate you because no one in the world has the time to play everything they’re releasing over the next six months. It’s not like you can put off getting the games either. Atlus’ print runs are so small that it’s a guarantee you’ll be paying three times the release price on Ebay just six months after a game comes out. You are cruel, Atlus. But so, so giving.

Turns out that not only is Atlus giving the Playstation 2 one last morsel with Devil Summoner 2: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon this spring. They’re also releasing *breath* SMT: Devil Survivor, Dokapon Journey, Crimson Gem Saga, Knights in the Nightmare, and Super Robot Taisen OG Saga: Endless Frontier *phew*. It isn’t set in stone that Atlus will be releasing each and every one of these games in North America. They haven’t been officially announced. They did, however, all show up on Amazon’s schedule and then promptly disappear after word spread around the web. Considering Atlus’ relationship with Amazon – they’ve regularly run exclusive pre-order programs with the online retailer and have offered some games solely through the site – it’s a good bet they’ll all cross the Pacific.

Devil Survivor isn’t too big of a shock considering the Shin Megami Tensei franchise-umbrella’s growing popularity in the west. The same goes for Sting’s Knights in the Nightmare and Dokapon Journey, as they’re just the sort of cult software Atlus specializes in. The others, however, are pretty surprising. The Super Robot Taisen series has never managed to get much of a foothold in the west and OG Saga: Endless Frontier is covered in Namco’s characters. Crimson Gem Saga is even weirder. It’s original name is Astonishia Story 2. The original Astonishia Story actually came out in North America back in 2006 thanks to Ubisoft. Why the name change?

I’m pumped for Super Robot Taisen. Never got around to playing one of those. OG Saga: Endless Frontier has both giant robots and giant breasts so it seems like a good place to start.

(Link: Siliconera, NeoGAF)

Related links:

And Now Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Love: Atlus Reprints Persona 2
WTFriday: Atlus Takes on Third Wave Feminism
Persona 2: Innocent Sin Translation Complete
My Top 10 of 2008 in No Particular Order: Persona 3: FES
Persona 4: Harrowing, True Pre-Order Tales! With Prizes, Prizes, Priz-izes!

New Year’s Resolutions For a Few Of Our Favorite Publishers

John Constantine — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 00:30:00 GMT

Now, to close out the first full week of 2009, we will do for videogame publishers what we did for console makers: we will tell them how to live their sordid, godforsaken lives! You’d think developers would make the list, but no. No, I tend to trust them, so they will be left to their own devices, free from the crushing logic of advice from 61 Frames Per Second.

In 2009, the following folks should resolve to do the following things:

EA – Stick to your guns and keep investing in new IP. 2008 was good stuff, Riccitello. Keep promoting Mirror’s Edge and Dead Space, they will find their audience. And EA Sports? How about SSX4 already.

Capcom – Resolve to support Dark Void with an aggressive marketing campaign and release it during the summer. Do not let this one die during the holiday rush. Also, Street Fighter III HD Remix. You know it would be sweet.

Atari – Do not release Ghosbusters until it is perfect.

Namco – Push Klonoa like you have never pushed a game in your entire lives. Tell people it will make them lose weight, tell them it will make them smarter. And knock it off with the nickel-and-dime DLC already, what is this, 2006?

Square-Enix – S-E, I want you to go out tomorrow, hop on a train, and pay Jupiter Games a visit. You cut them a check, and you tell them to make whatever they can imagine. The people who made The World Ends With You should be allowed to make whatever they like.

Konami – Release a press statement claiming you were forced to make Rock Revolution at gun point.

Midway – Um. Hang in there?

Activision – Give Neversoft the vacation they so desperately need and deserve.

Atlus – More PS1 reprints!

Take-Two – If Bioshock 2 looks stupid, don’t be afraid to cancel it.

Ubisoft – Release Beyond Good & Evil 2 by the end of the year. Please. PLEASE!

XSEED – Keep on keepin’ on, you guys. Can’t believe you actually localized Retro Game Master. Just awesome.

Tecmo-Koei – No Dynasty Warriors: Dead or Alive games. Just don’t. I know you're thinking about it.

SEGA – Disband Sonic Team. It’s over. Enough.

And that about covers it. Happy New Year, everyone.

Related links:

Microsoft’s New Year’s Resolution
Nintendo’s New Year’s Resolution
Sony’s New Year’s Resolution
Virtual Console New Year's Resolutions

My Top 10 of 2008 in No Particular Order: Persona 3: FES

Bob Mackey — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 04:00:00 GMT

It's the end of another year, and that can only mean one thing: it's list season. Inevitably, you're going to see top ten lists by the thousands; and, as an official member of the enthusiast press, I'm afraid I can't violate my directive. But, to make things a little more interesting, I've decided to assemble my 10 favorite games of this year in non-hierarchical form because--let's face facts--it's hard to pick a favorite. And unlike other top 10 lists, this one will be doled out to you in piecemeal over the next several excruciating days! Please enjoy.

I really didn't know what to expect when I picked up Persona 3: FES; I was initially drawn to the game by its budget price of 30 bucks, and the fact that I was about to have a lot of free time on my hands. My brief flirtations with the Shin Megami Tensei series usually ended in frustration--chalk that up to the fact that I only started messing around with the franchise with SMT: Nocturne, which was notoriously difficult. But Persona 3 was a pleasant surprise, aside from its typically slow JRPG start where you're not actually allowed to do anything for several hours. I wasted over 100 hours of my late spring/early summer 2008 time on this game, but that's really nothing to be ashamed of; Persona is a pretty good way to waste your life.

I've been doing my best to avoid Persona 4; as I've blogged in the past, I know that it'll take up most of my well-deserved multiple-week break from academia. But, since writing that initial post, I've been growing weaker and weaker. And I know what's going to happen. The rational part of my brain will say, "Yes, but you still need to finish the bonus content of Persona 3!" Then, after succumbing to my desires, Ol' Mr. Rational will spout, "But Bobbbbb, it's an Atlus game! You need to get a copy before you can't get one at all anymore!" Then, when my copy arrives in the mail, I'll say, "Hey, no harm in checking it out for just a few minutes, right?"

In other words, please stay tuned for my Best of 2009 list, where Persona 4 will undoubtedly make an appearance.

:(

Related Links

My Top 10 of 2008 in No Particular Order: Audiosurf
My Top 10 of 2008 in No Particular Order: Braid
My Top 10 of 2008 in No Particular Order: Grand Theft Auto IV
My Top 10 of 2008 in No Particular Order: Fable 2
My Top 10 of 2008 in No Particular Order: Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney

Persona 4: Harrowing, True Pre-Order Tales! With Prizes, Prizes, Priz-izes!

John Constantine — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 22:00:00 GMT

True story the first: way back during the summer of 1999, shortly after graduating from high school, I took the cash moneys I’d been given by my loving family (money intended for college), pooled it in with a dash of my savings account, and marched to my local Electronics Boutique. “Ho, Game Jockey!” I said, full of mirth and good will, “Take these funds and place my name inside your hallowed ledger. I am pre-ordering a Dreamcast in full!” It was going to be awesome. I paid for the system, Sonic Adventure, and a VMU. They gave me a t-shirt and a receipt. I then waited for that sacred day of 9/9/99 to roll around when all that is good would be delivered to me. Turned out Electronics Boutique were filthy liars, in more way than one. First, the midnight sale didn’t start until 1:30am. I am sure there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for this fact, though none of the shifty nerds in line were let in on it. I was nonplussed but hardly enraged. But then I got to the counter, handed them my receipt, and was handed a bag with a Dreamcast in it. But no VMU. No Sonic Adventure. I then calmly asked the cashier when these items would be forthcoming and he replied, “That is all that’s paid for on this receipt.” Then I murdered him.

Not really, but it was another half an hour before they finally handed over the goods. It was a long night.

True story the second: back in October, I pre-ordered the Persona 4 Social Link Expansion Pack from Amazon.com believing I was getting quite the deal: Persona 4 plus an extra “B-sides” soundtrack, a nifty t-shirt, a Persona calendar, and a stuffed animal of the game’s bizarre anthropomorphic character, Teddy, all for thirty bucks. That is a steal. When a giant box arrived at my work place yesterday, I was pumped and ready for some role-playing. Then I opened it and discovered that I can’t read. You see, this wasn’t an awesome pre-order deal. This was a bunch of stuff you pay for BESIDES the game. Amazon cleverly notes this in the product features section: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 game sold separately.

I am not smart. Pre-ordering is a dangerous business. But my lack of attention is your good fortune! I want to hear your tales of pre-order woe, dear reader. Send your story to johnc at nerve dot com and the most tragic, most infuriating, and/or hilarious yarn will win the delightful Teddy plush I mistakenly purchased believing it came with an awesome videogame. The one in the picture above.

So you know, the plastic bag Teddy is in says, “Warning: Plastic bags can be dangerous. To avoid danger of suffocation keep this bag away from babies and children.” Well that’s all nice and dandy, Mister Bag, but what the hell do we adults do?!

Related links:

Capcom, Street Fighter IV Cluttering My Home With Even More Useless Junk
Whatcha Not Playing: Persona 4
And Now Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Love: Atlus Reprints Persona 2
Persona 2: Innocent Sin Translation Complete
Yeah, But Is It Art?: Persona 3 FES

Whatcha Not Playing: Persona 4

Bob Mackey — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Persona 4 may not actually be out, but I'm still making an effort to actively avoid it. This is more than a little depressing, because I'm sure it's a fantastic RPG, and, quite possibly, the last good Playstation 2 release--unless the series decides to stay on Sony's eight year-old console. I'm not one to have a restraining order on good JRPGs, as they are kind of rare these days, but playing Persona 4 could be very hazardous to my health. It's not all of the demons and Satanic imagery that has me scared; it's the fact that this game could very well take over my upcoming (and desperately-needed) break from work, school, and life.

Typically, it's extremely rare for me to play a game for me than 100 hours--and hell, most games don't have that much content to spread around. But the last Persona game, Persona 3: FES, can be found in the handful of games where I've actually spent hours in the triple digits. Before you think that I'm a loser with too much time on my hands, please let me explain: Persona 3: FES was released at a time that I could take advantage of the most: the end of a long, tortuous semester, with 12 weeks of absolute freedom in front of me. Grad school doesn't give you much to do in the way of jobs or work during the summer.

Essentially, I had a Summer of George. And Persona 3 was the catalyst that kicked it off.

In retrospect, I can't actually be sure if FES was actually a good game; it was hella repetitive (moreso than most JRPGs), looked like a Dreamcast game, and had an irritating, repetitive soundtrack. Yet I could not stop playing. This game consumed the first half of my summer in a way that I hadn't seen since the original Tales of Symphonia; in fact, my daily ritual started with playing a solid three hours of FES every morning while trying to forget about how many new experiences I could have if not for investing so many damn hours into the game. And, even after all of these marathon sessions, the bonus content of the game is calling to me from a little, black memory card. But I must stay strong.

This post is by no means an attack on the quality of the Persona series--it's an attack on my obsessive nature, if anything. But Persona is something I'm not going to be able to go back to until there's a major overhaul of the franchise; at this point in my life, I really can't justify sinking 100 hours into what seems to be a nearly-identical experience. Still, it would be fun.

No. No. Must stay strong.

Related Links:

And Now Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Love: Atlus Reprints Persona 2
Yeah, But Is It Art?: Persona 3 FES
The Ten Videogames That Should Have Been Controversial, Part 3

And Now Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Love: Atlus Reprints Persona 2

John Constantine — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 00:15:00 GMT

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: I’ve got issues with Japanese role-playing games. I tend to, well, disappear into them. And as much as they make our own Bob Mackey OCD within the confines of their battle systems, item management, and quaint townships, they tend to make me OCD in my waking life. When I start one that really gets its hooks into me, I don’t do much else with life until it’s done. Much like the troubles I had with Dragon Quest VIII back in 2005, Persona 3 ruined me for September 2007. Eighty-nine hours of level grinding, managing completely fictional friendships (whilst ignoring real ones,) and bouncing J-pop that nearly drove my roommates to murder me. It was my first time with the Shin Megami Tensei franchise and I couldn’t have been more impressed, or obsessed, with it.

Needless to say, I’ve been dreading Persona 4. Not because I think it won’t live up to Persona 3. No, I’m afraid of what it’s going to do my brain. And now, for seemingly no other reason than they are awesome, Atlus is making everything worse. The publisher sent out an email today announcing that they are reprinting Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, a Playstation 1 game, “to commemorate the upcoming release of Persona 4 and to thank you for your interest, dedication, and support of the SMT series.”

Who does that?! Who reprints an eight year-old game for a long-dead console? Someone who loves you, that’s who.

You can only get a copy through Amazon and Atlus says copies are extremely limited. Seeing as how original copies go for upwards of a c-note on ebay, I’d suggest you hop to it.

Ugh. My life is over.

(Link: Gamer Tell)

Related links:

RPGs Make Me OCD
Going There: Persona 4 and Feeling the World
Yeah, But Is It Art?: Persona 3 FES
Persona 2: Innocent Sin Translation Complete

Going There: Persona 4 and Feeling the World

John Constantine — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Cable television, on the whole, baffles me. Twenty years ago, the joke went that there’s fifty channels and nothing good’s ever on. Now it’s one-thousand channels. You do stumble on something great here and there, though. For example, I watched three episodes of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern this past weekend. The deal is that chef Zimmern travels all over the earth and eats every bizarre local delicacy he can get his hands on. It is awesome. In one episode, he went to Iceland, and dined on puffin. I was fascinated. Not by the unusual choice of fowl, but by the process and ritual behind how puffins are hunted. Puffin hunting is apparently an old, Icelandic father-son bonding tradition. The men go out to one of the insanely remote islands where puffins nest and they catch them with small nets on the end of giant poles. It’s all they eat for days. They hunt on the edge of huge cliffs beside the ocean.

Naturally, this got me thinking about videogames.

Persona 4 is coming out in the United States in December. The Personas, and every title in their parent franchise Shin Megami Tensei, are intensely Japanese games, steeped in religious iconography distinct to the archipelago. The games’ common motif, modern urban Japan, is foreign but still familiar thanks to the way Japan is commonly depicted in western media. People think of Tokyo when they think of Japan. Persona 4, however, is going to be as alien to the average American as puffin hunting. The game is set in rural Japan, a choice intended to evoke nostalgia according to the developers. But how do you translate that idiosyncratic experience to a player who isn’t Japanese?

The nostalgia, the image of a simpler life meant to recall summer vacations and innocence for Japanese Persona players, can carry over to anyone in the world because the game can put them there, in that place, and let them explore. The emotional tone can be influenced by visual and aural cues and then the player can experience it for themselves. Andrew Zimmern showed me Icelandic tradition, he explained its history to me. But he couldn’t let me feel it, touch that place.

I can see a game.

I could press start and be me. I’m in New York, but I decide to move to Iceland. I need a change. So I have to find transport. I find a plane, I find a boat, I find a way to get there. Then I make my life. Get a little of that Will Wright, Sims action here. Let me find a home, find work, learn the language, find a wife. Let me get to the halfway point and have a son. Then have the whole game shift gears, go from sim to adventure game. Let the game be about my great-grandson living his life. He could bring my great-great-grandson puffin hunting.

This is what games can do. The experience of a culture, the experience of a place, an experience most likely cut-off from you, can be touched. Not read about, not seen. Touched.

Isn’t that exciting?

Related links:

Yeah, But Is It Art?: Persona 3 FES
The Ten Videogames That Should Have Been Controversial